AoE=Dead Wyvern

[Laciante]

I like not having to micromanage him. If I wanted full control over a pet I'd play BST.
Making them highly resistant to AoE dmg and a "come here" for positioning is all I think is necessary. Oh and also make them incapable of pathing me: either fly higher, or let me move through w/o resistance (but that's not really on topic)

[Wenceslao]

I think the ability to give comands to wyvern should help us (stay, retreat, etc)

[Swords]

I don't think the OPs ideas are good at all, I'm sorry to say. We need to be realistic with our suggestions to SE.

To be honest the only thing I think the wyvern could do with getting is Healing Breath IV at Lv95-99.

Maybe a higher HP pool for our Wyverns to combat some of those insanely high damage AOE's.

[Gotterdammerung]

u cant arbitrarily add hp. The damage and healing of the wyverns breaths are based on hp. A boost to hp large enough to fix the problem would just unbalance the damage of smiting breath and the healing of healing breath.

I only see a few reasonable fixes.

#1 my original suggestion of making it a non-issue.
#2 the idea of a command that makes ur wyvern stay so u can place it out of range of danger. (this one is a weak fix. Most AoEs on bosses are 20 yalms and who knows the range of healing breath...)
#3 Make wyverns targetable by player spells.
#4 Make wyverns immune to AoE sources of damage. Basically they would be damaged by single target damage sources when they took hate.

[Swords]

I always thought there was a hard cap to the amount that wyvern breaths can be enhanced through stats/gear like cure spells or MAB. I always just assumed we could never feesably hit that cap due to limited gear enhancements.

[Mirage]

I am all for an ability (a stance, perhaps) that increased the wyvens survivability in exchange for lowering their offensive capabilities. What seems to be the most logical choice here is to let the wyvern fly higher, out of range of many AoEs. In return, of course, no melee attack rounds. If the dev team thinks "no damage taken from any AoE" is too broken, they could of course make it a 50% damage resistance when using that defensive stance.

When triggering a breath usage, the wyvern would automatically come closer for a short amount of time, during which it could again get hit by AoE moves (and take normal damage from them), but after the breath was over, it would soon go back to it's defensive positioning after not too long. While you still could get unlucky and call it down for a breath at the same time as an AoE is performed, keeping it out of range the rest of the time should reduce the damage it takes over time significantly.

[Faneelk]

While I do agree that taking care of your Wyvern is part of your job as a DRG, no matter how actively you attempt to keep it alive, when an NM, that you'll be fighting 15 times an hour, such as Dragua that spams -agas and other AoEs, your Wyvern will be dead in a matter of seconds.

Here are some possible solutions:

1) Reduce Call Wyvern Timer
2) Allow Cruor Buffs to go to pets. This will not add an unreasonable boost to Healing Breaths. In Pre-Abyssea days, Wyvern Healing Breaths were much more effective, granting a much higher percentage of HP Recovery than it does now. Now, not much has changed in regard to how much HP Healing Breaths grant, making them less effective as they used to be.
3) Grant a moderate DEF bonus, and a major Magic DEF Bonus. While many AoEs in Abyssea are physical, the majority seems to be magic based. Granting a major Physical DEF boost would cause people to make their Wyvern tank.

Please do not:

Give Wyverns invincibility. This would take away a major aspect of DRG, even rendering a certain ability pointless.

[Ophannus]

Who cares about abyssea, those upgrades only help us in one small part of the game. We need universal improvements to wyverns

[Faneelk]

It wasn't as big of a problem until the introduction of Abyssea. First, there is much less downtime in Abyssea than old content. Before, there would be so much running that if your Wyvern died to an AoE or even your own carelessness your timer would already be up. Also, mobs in Abyssea deal significantly higher damage to a Wyvern with virtually unchanged health.